<Old Stuff>

Since I changed the "feel" of my site last year, these next few pictures have not existed online. However, I want them out there as a method of shaming me into actually pulling my finger out.

These pictures show the state of all my wargaming armies, or at least, how they looked the last time I lined them all up for photos. Not a great deal has changed for most of them, which indicates just how much of a task I still have in front of me in order to get them all done.

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<Old Stuff>

Here are my 6mm Epic armies. It's one of my deepest gaming regrets that I have not really shown this game any love for the last decade. I mean, I used to really enjoy playing the old Epic Space Marine, and my later botched attempts at reviving it. Plus, I have so many models, including some Andrayada from Dark Realm Miniatures that I was working on making up my own rules for.

A lot of the models that I have painted for this game were done back in the 1990s, so are really crappy and in dire need of being updated. Therefore nothing is really up to my current standard other than the Khorne and Nurgle parts of my Chaos army, while hopefully the Tyranids will be done at some point sooner rather than later.

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<Old Stuff>

Here are my 40K armies. I'm further along at getting these painted compared to my Epic armies, but that's not really saying much. All of my Tyranids are done, and the vast majority of my Space Marines. I've just got to paint the other Marines that I added to the army a while back.

That only really leaves 3 armies, though I only count them as 2. All the way back from when I first started to collect them, it has always been my intent for the Eldar and Tau to be one allied army. Of course, as is typical of me, I didn't play anything of 6th or 7th editions, when these two were actually allowed to ally together and were supposed to be quite powerful. But hey, I don't care. If I do get round to using them in 8th I'll probably still throw them together, even if it means losing a lot of their special rules.

I do also have a small number of Orks and Sisters Of Battle, but they're nowhere near full armies, and I don't intend on making them so. Got enough to get through already...

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<Old Stuff>

Of my 40K armies that are not yet fully painted, only a few models are even slightly worthy of having their picture taken. And here they are:

After months of waiting, time off work and some good weather finally allowed me to go crazy with the varnish and get all my big bugs tabletop ready at last. Now, the thing is, getting them all out of and back into their cases was an absolute pain in the ass because of all their spiky bits. I don't think I'm going to like doing that very often when we game, especially as the Nidz are a bit weak rules-wise right now.

Maybe I need to paint up my Guard or Tau real quick...

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Also got around to doing something I thought of a while back, which was to re-paint an old fish tank decoration Scoob and I bought years ago. I was never particularly happy with the quick and ready paint job I gave it first time around, but I'm much happier now.

It's been a long time since I last made any wargaming terrain, so just recently I've taken a break from painting epic scale Nidz to finally get around to working on the MDF terrain I bought more than a year ago.
I know a year is a long time, but at least I've actually done it at last. That's more than what could be said for most things I start in this hobby.

Not everything went to plan during this process, but they've turned out fairly acceptable for my fairly mediocre standards.

For a start, after the first drybrush, I thought the ruins looked really good. But then when I washed them using a wash of my own design, they went really dark, so I ended up drybrushing them again quite a lot to dry and bring them back up.

Also, the bases warped a bit when I glued and painted them, something which did not happen last time I used this kind of wood for bases back in 2010. Maybe this time I just used way too much paint and glue.

And finally, no matter how I tried, I could not seem to get a nice even finish of static grass. Some of the areas on the bases are still quite thin, where it's still possible to see the undercoat, even though they've had three applications of grass. I just don't get it.

Nevermind. At least they're ready for some action.

It's not going as fast as I'd like, but I'm still making fairly decent progress on updating and adding to the paint on my old Epic Tyranid army. I've now got one of the two boxes and a Hierodule Titan all finished and ready to base. And up next are the Trygons.

I had a thought the other day about the old Epic Tyranid models that I used to have, before I bought the new ones that came out in the Epic 40,000 era. My belief was that I'd thrown them out when I tidied out my epic spares box a couple of years ago, but I was happy to find them still skulking in the loft. When I (finally) get around to doing the Epic-S rules again, I think these bigger, older models will get their own rules, that make them a bit stronger and tougher than the newer versions.

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A couple more 40K games have happened over the last few weeks. Like our previous games, they were between Space Marines and Orks and were both 2000pts.

In the first game, I had first turn, but hadn't really brought much long range firepower. Also, with the terrain the way it was, blocking lines of sight, little happened on turn one. On each of the three turns, the Ork Weirdboy sent a Boyz mob forward using Da' Jump to threaten my forces. Overall, Scoob's Orks easily took their left flank, while I put quite a lot of hurt onto the Orks on my left flank. Even then, I got pinned back into my left corner, despite trying to push out with a Vindicator that was getting protected and healed by a Master Of The Forge Techmarine. No doubt, that tank stayed alive far longer than it should, and absorbed a lot of damage that would have wrecked my forces otherwise.
We ended after 3 turns, agreeing to a draw.

In the most recent game we went a bit different and I chose the Search & Destroy deployment map. Remembering my faults from last time I took a lot more firepower, and took 4 characters all geared to either keeping me alive or buffing my shooting. As it was, the wrecked stompa prevented most shooting from Scoob's artillery to my vehicles and vice versa. For the first time this edition, I also had brought along some assassins, but the Vindicare, who I was most looking forward to using, did very little. In contrast, my 2 Eversors popped up and wrecked face, with one taking out a unit of Stormboyz, and one charging some Boyz and killing 14 of them.
I had a great deal of luck with random amounts of shots in this game, especially the Whirlwind, while Scoob's Shokk Attack Gun and artillery didn't do as well as they normally do. But yet again, even though I was doing well with my shooting, I was still very much pegged back, and could not push out onto the map, despite attempts from Scouts, Tactical Squads, an Assault Squad and some Sternguard dropping in using a Drop Pod. So even though Scoob surrendered after his 4th turn, I was still very much languishing in my deployment zone, and I can't help but think all these games we've been playing would be much harder for me if we were using objectives.

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<Old Stuff>

Finally got around to completing my transfer of all the old battle reports from the old site to this one, something I started a few months back. As there are so many of these battles, they are stored on their own pages, which can be found below:

Warhammer 40K Battle Report Archive Epic Space Marine Battle Report Archive