Cast off the shackles of your slumber! The galaxy shall be ours once again!

 After two decades of deathless slumber, I have finally woken them from their tomb!

Back in 2002 Codex Necrons came out, and a new army was added to the 40k universe.  Yes, they had models before that, but now they had a full list to work with!  Over time I acquired a couple of the starter boxes, a monolith, flayed ones, ect.   But, as any true 40k gamer would do, I never did more than assemble the bare plastic.  There they sat, spending about 20 years in their case.

For whatever reason, this January, I decided to take them all out and look at them.  I always liked the look of the army, even if they are just space skeletons.  As 40k editions passed, they have become more overtly Egyptian space skeletons, but I don't mind that aesthetic.     After hemming and hawing a diversion from already in-progress wargame plans, I decided I would paint them.  BUT FIRST, I had to buy some more to bring them from up from my 3rd edition limitations.  (insert facepalm)  Admittedly,  it is still far from what can be considered a meta army.   

---After two months of on-and-off painting, I am now finished.---

This marks a major milestone, in that it is the first 40k army I have that is completely painted. Every. Single. Model.  Despite the fact that many are redundant (why do I own 70 Necron warriors?) and will never see the tabletop, I do feel delighted in the accomplishment.   Even if it took roughly half my life to achieve. 

basement crawling with silver skeletons

The group shot

3rd Edition Wraiths

3rd Edition Tomb Spyders

New Deathmarks

Classic Spooky Bois with glorious green acrylic rods

Seriously... 70 of these.

Scarab Swarms

3rd Edition Immortals

Triarch Praetorians

I kitbashed some extra Warrior models with the leftover bits from the Deathmark kit to make Immortals with Tesla Carbines

3rd Edition Flayed Ones

(Lokhust) Destroyers

Old Heavy Destroyer is now a Lokhust Heavy Destroyer

Necron Lord with Resurrection Orb

Necron Lord

C'tan Shard of the Nightbringer

Very Spooky Boi

Classic Monolith 

I am very annoyed that the old decals silvered up.  I tried so much micro sol and set, but was unable to make them look any better.

BUILD THAT WALL

A project marked by excessive and tedious repetition; I have finally finished my collection of Peter Pig walls.  Over the years I had been slowly buying a set here and there when I would place other orders.  I even went so far as to contact them for a special order of just the long straight wall sections.  (which they very nicely obliged) The walls are the Peter Pig "High Walls" found under the Normandy Stuff section of their scenery.  They are resin and each pack contains 5 pieces, 1 Long, 1 Long with a breach, 1 medium and two short lengths.  I also picked up 3 packs of their doors.  The walls are a brick and stucco design that is pretty universal and useful to this day.  The doors a mixture of wooden and metal designs.

In the end it took a couple weeks, (mostly due to my incredible slowness) but it is done.  Over 22 feet of walls and a foot worth of doorways.

23.85' to be exact

Are You Ready For Some Football?

Our gaming group routinely has outbursts away from the core historical(-ish) games that make up the bulwark of our gaming.  Blood Bowl is one of these great asides.  A few years ago Games Workshop re-released Blood Bowl.  It must have been a success as they have continued (although slowly) to release more and more miniatures for the various teams. 

I enjoy Blood Bowl but will be quick to tell you that I'm not very good at the game.  There are players in our group who compete using teams with much more thought out strategies.  I, on the other hand, play the perpetual bottom-feeders: Goblins.  I find it enjoyable to play a team that can be expected to lose, it keeps me from getting to heavily invested in the competition.  The greatest joy is the wild collection of illegal weapons they can wield (before getting caught and sent off).  Nothing beats chainsawing apart an opposing player that you lack the strength to even attempt to block.  Or lobbing a bomb into a nicely set up cage.  The re-release also gave the Goblins two new players: the Doom Diver and the Ooligan.  I've yet to play a game with these new models, so it will be exciting to see how they fit in. With the exception of two trolls that I use to anchor the center of my line, the rest of the normal players are largely useless speedbumps.

Gobbos

Back: Doom Diver, Bomma, Pogoer

Front: Ooligan, Looney, Fanatic

Trolls

from behind

The new models are spectacular.  There are a lot of great details and character, even amongst the normal goblins.  The Forge World troll (#20) adds some distinction between the two big men, and if you believe the rumors, was also a swipe at people who complained that every big man in Blood Bowl was modelled with "one leg in the air".

I can now retire my old Gobbo team.  I painted it about 10 years ago, and until this team might have been the last 28mm (heroic?/32mm?.... basically whatever size GW is) figures I painted before diving off into 15mm and smaller historicals.  They'll be stowed away unless someone else decides they want to be my rowdy friends.

Patrick's Patent Guide for Painting Any Rate Ship

While the age of fighting sail has always been a staple when it comes to my earliest memories of wargaming, I knew very little about it when I started to revive that memory a couple of years ago.  

So with my lack of knowledge I took the cautious approach and... went straight to GHQ and hit BUY BUY BUY!!!!

After my fervor died down I did a lot of Google searching, hit up TMP and bought some books on the period.    Probably the best find for me was Langton Miniatures.   Not only do they sell a lot of fine miniatures, they even sell the odd ones that GHQ doesn't.  More importantly, they sell  A GUIDE TO: Assembly, Painting & Rigging of Napoleonic Naval Models in Scale 1:1200.  While that might be a mouthful, the content is immeasurable.

simply referred to as "the guide" from now on

The book covers...  well everything it says in the title.  As far as painting goes, it has diagrams to point out all the parts of the sails and hull.  Further, it goes into listing how each part could/should be painted.

Modern French Army - Part 3.5, The Vehicles (Enter the VBCI)

As mentioned before, I have scoured the internet in search of French military equipment to expand my little reaction force.  I even reached out to a number of people who produce models, but never received replies.   That was until the man of the hour, Luis Glehn, hit me up with the encouraging words "Give me a few days and I should be able to do it".   True to his word, he delivered and I can't thank him enough.  He has a Shapeways store Small Scale Shop with over 250 items.  I highly recommend his work, and it's hard to beat someone who will go out of the way to simply create the things you need.

I'm really excited, as having models of these will really allow us to wargame the forefront of French military involvements. As well as many hypothetical engagements.

VBCI:

Vehicule Blinde de Combat d'Infanterie

The French "Armored Infantry Fighting Vehicle", (such an original name), leapt the French military into the world of massive but maneuverable IFVs. Standing in about a meter taller than the VAB and well over a meter than the AMX-10P, this is a real beast.   Armed with a 25mm dual feed cannon and a co-axial 7.62mm machine gun, it's standard form also packs a little more punch than the standard AMX-10P that it is replacing.  The vehicle was designed to be fully integrated with the new integrated vehicle information system as well as the FELIN system.  The VBCI has a crew of three and can carry an additional 8 people. (7 men being the standard squad size)

Stealth fields!!!

(their original plastic form)

Finishing Up Loose Ends

So, quite clearly I've not posted anything in a while.  And while normally you can attribute this to pure laziness, this time I've actually been doing some work at painting.  In spite of my terrible work schedule, I plugged through roughly 100+ figures, 22 animals and 4 vehicles.  These are all inching me toward finally running my long talked about mini campaing.  But there is always still so much more work to do.

*These are just samplings. (as photographs of the same figures wearing the same or slightly different clothes seemed pointless)   
**Apologies for the photos, I am working through using a new camera set up.

POLICE:

Dusting Off A Classic

Snap-shot: Mansourah

Egyptian MiGs attempt to intercept Israelis

7 October 1973, 0745hrs

Over Mansourah Airfield, Egypt

Our group had previously played through 18 of the 27 missions included in the Star and Pyramid campaign book for the Check Your 6! Jet Age rules.  It has been well over a year since the last time we played any of the missions.  As a testament to how easy the rules are, we got 6 players through this game without problem.

The Forces:

Egyptian Air Force:
6 MiG-21MFs with 1 Veteran pilot, 1 Skilled pilot and 4 Green pilots
3 Light AAA
1 SA-3B Battery

Israel Air Force:
2 F-4Es (cover flight) with 1 Veteran pilot and 1 Skilled pilot
2 F-4Es (bomb flight) with 2 Skilled pilots
4 A-4N with 1 Veteran pilot and 3 Skilled pilots

The Israeli orders were simple, the 2 F-4s loaded out as bombers were to hit the runway, while the A-4s bombed the airbase facilities and command center adjacent to the runway.  This left 2 F-4s to cover the bombing run, entering a few turns into the game.

The Egyptians mission was also straightforward: keep the runway from being bombed, while destroying as many Israelis as possible.