Frontkick tournament - Debrief

The Frontkick tournament was played this week-end in Carrières, close to Paris. 36 players, with 5 games and swiss round pairing over 2 days.

As usual, a great event, relaxed, pretty well run by the Captain, and the first tournament to open the 2013/2014 gaming season after the summer pause.

First a couple of pictures of an incredible army, the alien inspired tyranids of EDLR, winner of the best painted award :

EDLR flying prince

EDLR army and  winner of the best painted award

Sadly I did not get to play against it but as all EDLR works, it is visually stunning. I have played against Edlr tyranids since the nineties and I think this is his 3rd iteration.

I played against 5 tournament regulars:
First game against Padre with a GI/SW list,

Second game against Wilme (the French ETC Captain) with his ETC Greyknight list:

Third  game against Manix with Dark-Eldar/Eldar (sorry no-pics).

Fourth game against Lex-A (another member of the French ETC team) with a stunning Deamons and CSM alliance :

and finally Fifth game against Mogor, with a very good pure deamon list.

The venue was nice, about 20 minutes drive from Paris, with plenty of room to play:

I came with my eldars, with my newly painted Paladin Knight house as a Tau ally:

A pretty hard list with plenty of firepower and nice combos as might be expected of an alliance of 2 of the newest codexes...

On the right side you can see my eldar main force, using Iyanden rules.
Farseer on bike
10 Guardians in holofield and shuricanon, scatter laser wave serpent
7 Dire avengers in holofield and shuricanon, scatter laser wave serpent
3 Jetbikes with shuricanon
Wraithknight
3 Shadow weavers
3 Dark reapers, exarch with fast shot and night vision.

Here you can see the knight house, count as Tau:
On the top left : Technoadept on combet chassis: Tau commander with missile pods, drone controler and split fire, 2 marker drones (servo-skulls).
Just below : house serfs with a techno adept : 10 kroots and a kroot hound.
bottom right: Servo skulls : 4 marker drones
top right: Paladin knight : riptide with ion, fusion blaster, early warning overide, skyfire.
Behind :  Missile platforms: 2 broadsides with 2 missile drones.

I got a nice 16/20 in  painting  which combined with 3 victories and 2 losses led me to 9th place.

Time to reload,
Ica

Mechanicum : paladin knight and enginseer retinue

After the missile platforms I decided to continue my mechanicum forces with an enginseer from FW and a Knight Titan :

The enginseer retinue is slightly converted from dark Vengeance cultists, with all chaos markings removed and some hoods and bionics added.

For the paladin, I decided to convert it a bit, reducing the size of the canon and adding a shield in place of the sword. I intend to play him as a count as riptide, so it made more sense.

Time to reload,
Ica

Drone walker to mechanicum missile platform

I finally took the time to convert the ramshackle drones walkers:

First a quick review of the product : I got them within 2 weeks of ordering, with nice cardboard and bubble paper packaging. All parts for each models were separated into small plastic bags, nothing got broken and everything was there.

However the cast quality was only so-so. The resin is hard and brittle, with sometimes large holes (1mm diameter) and other small casting flaws. Pretty much the quality I espect from my own casts so a bit disappointed there.

Details are crisp though and the parts can be corrected (think a bit worse than forgeworld quality).

It was okay for my purposes as most of the flaws where on the "thigh" part that I would need to cut to fit the model on a 60mm base.

To do that I cut the thigh and replaced it by a small plastic ball wedged between 2 green stuff blobs, smoothed to either side.

The missile launchers of course come from the GW Valkyrie kit and are magnetised to the back with a small platform made with a bit from the campaign supplement and plastic sprue.

 I made 2 of those with a slightly different paiting pattern to experiment the Jihess style  way of fast painting.
With an airbrush and a sponge I finished them in about 6 hours.

Time to reload,

Ica

Drone Walker from Ramshackle Games

Just ordered some of those beauties from Ramshackle games: http://ramshacklegames.co.uk/

I hope to turn those into Weapon platforms, with a mechanicum tint.
You can expect a review as soon as I get them.

Time to reload!
Ica

The Jericho : WIP shots and howto

Okay, not really a step by step, but a few WIP shots with explanations of how I converted the Jericho.

First a small description of the materials I used :
1) PVC foamboard : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-cell_PVC_foamboard
This forms the bulk of the structure. I bought it in 2mm thick sheets at my DIY shop.
It's really easy to work, cut, carve and will hold its shape pretty well.

2) Sheet styrene, 0.5mm thick

3) green stuff/milliput in a 50/50 combination

First I started with the side skirts:
85mm * 15mm strips on top of 2 small triangles and an additional 65*2 strip

This gave a me a strong base for the pod.
Then I constructed the pod with one large 55* 4 sheet for the top and 2 strips of 60*10 per side.
The front structure was mostly done by trials and errors.

I then added a back bracer for the pod where the magnets for the opening are:

Next step are the characteritic raised skirts of the praetor constructed as boxes, 2 small PVC triangles on each side and a rectangle of 0.5mm styrene on top:

To add detailling and hide junctions I add additional sheets of 0.5mm styrene on tiop of the raised skirts, and 2.5mm strips of 0.5mm styrene :

I also added a bit from the original manticore and rear bracings for the pod.
I started to fill the gaps with the green stuff/milliput mixture.

Final step was to add the missiles and finish the pod :

The missiles are made from reynold paper mates clear end and filled with greenstuff/milliput.

I will probably go back to it to add some rivets once I'm happy with a technique.

Time to reload!
Ica

The Jericho : when a manticore meets a Praetor

Hello everyone, 

after a couple of month of hiatus, I wanted to show you the latest from the forge : the Jericho weapon system!

Highly inspired by the Forge world Praetor missile launcher, this my second major plasticard conversion after my calth pattern storm talon.

I started from the manticore GW kit, and built the missile pod  from scratch:

The rear pod is movable and hinges on magnets to be able to remove and paint the thing!

Hopefully I should post a step by step soon.

Time to reload!
Ica

Showcase : Ultramarine terminator sergeant

Pictures time!
Not a lot of hobby time lately so here's a few picture of one of my Space Hulk terminators.
Still not happy about the lighting for the photos, I need some way to have less reflections.

Time to reload!

Ultramarine rhino : a few adjustments

Following comments on my warhammer-forum thread, I decided to make a few adjustments to the rhino:

Switched the mesh pattern on the sides to a checkboard pattern and reduced the front lamps OSL.

I also corrected the front thread where I had forgotten a spot under the mud-guard.

Enjoy!

Time to reload,
Ica

Showcase : Ultramarine rhino

I finally finished the first rhino with my new color scheme.

Notice the XIII in trompe l'oeil on the door! The only conversion here is on the storm bolter, fattened to a quad-bolter. I play it as 2 storm bolters for extra soft comp!

I'm not too happy about the front OSL which look slightly too big, I'll do better next time.
Time to reload!

Industrial battlefield : bases tutorial

 Here is a short tutorial on how I make and paint my Ultramarine bases.

1) The location

Before starting your basing efforts, I think it's best to imagine your force in action,

where are they fighting? How long have they been fighting for? Who are they fighting?

I first started my Ultramarines on swampy bases. I pictured them fighting toe to toe with tyranids in a forsaken swamp, knee deep in the mud and brackish water. I started a few bases then painted a whole batch in a hurry for a tournament.

Here's my best effort:

Here's what my rush job looked like

They sucked!

I realised that I needed good looking bases, with a fast painting and modelling time.

The swamp bases could look good, but I had trouble transfering the process from 40mm to 25mm and they just took too long to paint and blend.

I could take the time to blend a few items on a base, but the main technique would have to be drybrushing.

I imagined that my Ultramarines were defending an old industrial complex.

Part of the force has been fighting for days in the complex, weathering several assaults and bombardments,

waiting reinforcements for a counter-attack. The other part of the force would be the reinforcements.

The main feature of the bases would be metal decking (to match with some of my space hulk terminators),

and concrete slabs to represent the walls of the complex. I would also sprinckle some other items : cables, tubes, lines,

to make them more interesting.

Materials:

plastic base

cork sheet (for the concrete slabs)

 fine plastic mesh (for the metal decking)

1. Cut rough pieces of cork the size of the plastic base
2. Glue them to the base, using PVA glue or a glue gun (recommended for speed)
3. Cut the mesh into small pieces about the size of your cork, glue them to the cork, using either PVA glue or a glue gun. Beware this step might prove difficult as the plastic has a tendency to curl up, you might need small clamps.
4. Glue random stuff to the base: sand, plastic strips, plastic tubes...

You should get something like this:

Prime black:

Dry brush (chaos black+shadow grey, shadow grey, shadow grey + white), and metal on the decking:

Now you should paint the small bits you glued during step 4.

Finally apply rust colored pigments :

 I use pigments in 2 ways : first as a paste (Brown iron oxyde by Vallejo + a dark brown called Terre de Cassel), mixed with white gas (Essence F in France), this will represent thick deposits, second with a dry brush for highlights with a lighter pigment (Dark red ocre by vallejo).

 Time to reload!